UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said Russian President Vladimir Putin will eventually have to negotiate, as he urged world leaders in a virtual summit to step up support for Ukraine and maintain pressure on Moscow.
The British leader told around 26 fellow leaders in a group call he hosted that they should focus on strengthening Ukraine, protecting any ceasefire, and maintaining pressure on Moscow.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had, he said, “shown once again, and beyond any doubt, that Ukraine is the party of peace” by accepting a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.
“But Putin is trying to delay—saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place,” he added.
And he insisted: “Sooner or later, Putin will have to come to the table.”
Military chiefs will meet again on Thursday in the UK as the coalition moves into the operational phase, he added.
“The group that met this morning is a bigger group than we had two weeks ago, there is a stronger collective resolve, and new commitments were put on the table this morning,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia aimed to gain a “stronger position” militarily ahead of any ceasefire, more than three years since it invaded his country.
“They want to improve their situation on the battlefield,” Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv.
The ceasefire proposal by Trump’s team comes as Russia has the upper hand in several areas along the front in Ukraine.
The Russian leader did not commit to an immediate ceasefire proposed by the US, instead setting conditions.
But Zelensky insisted that Putin was “lying about how a ceasefire is supposedly too complicated.”
